The Negotiation of New Family Formation Post-migration among Low-wage Migrant Workers: The Case of Canada

Abstract

This article examines how post-migration relationships are critical to shaping long-term migration and employment aspirations among migrant workers. The article offers an analysis of low-wage migrant workers’ experiences of establishing new families post-migration within Canada’s state-managed foreign labour migration regime. While the relational dynamics of migrant labour are well-documented, scholarship in this area tends to focus on the affective dimensions of maintaining transnational ties across time and geographic distance. In response, this article contributes to a growing interest among scholars to better understand a more varied range of emotional complexities associated with cross-border labour migration. Two main findings are presented. First, the article examines how prolonged family separation can result in the formation of new intimacies that can reshape migrant workers’ affective connections to sending and receiving countries. Second, the article examines how policies that entrench migrant workers’ temporary resident status doubly aggravate workers’ experiences of imposed family separation.